


Meet me on the hillside

by duesternis



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Drowning, Exposure, Ghosts, M/M, ghostly imagery, maybe i mean not really but yeah, surreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27327685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duesternis/pseuds/duesternis
Summary: “Do you want me to help you?” The girl’s voice is raspy, as if she has laughed too long and too loud. She reaches her little hand out for Charles and he takes it thoughtlessly.“Help you find your James?”Her grip is strong and sticky, her hand cold, even through his glove.“Please,” Charles croaks, looking over the crowd again.
Relationships: Charles Frederick Des Voeux/Lt James W. Fairholme
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Meet me on the hillside

Charles doesn’t quite know where he is.  
There are people around him, laughing, sharing sweets from sticky paper bags. Children chasing hoops and small dogs and somewhere a band plays a song he vaguely recalls from his own childhood.  
He twirls the walking stick in his gloved palm and turns around twice, scanning the crowd, the little booths dotting the perfect lawn.  
The sky is a striking blue, fluffy white clouds drifting past like little boats on a lake. The sun is bright but not blinding, warm but not sweltering.  
There are birds in the trees, chattering happily.

A man brushes past him, smelling of minty candy and an aftershave that Charles knows intimately.  
“James,” he calls, but the man walks on, doesn’t react at all.  
He’s too short, too wide to be James either way. His hair too light.

Charles turns again, starts down the rolling hill to the booths.  
The music seems louder, warped somehow in the high notes.  
The children running past laugh, loud and shrill, their sticks beating at their hoops and dogs with the same intent: to make them run longer.  
Charles shivers in the warmth of the sun and hurries past the first booth, lemonade being sold in large glass bottles.  
A woman sing-songs “James” and a boy with black hair rushes past Charles to attach himself to her skirts.

The next booth advertises “James’ fresh chestnuts” and Charles bites his tongue. The man in the booth has a beautiful mustache, the ends waxed just that way.  
“James,” Charles whispers and no one hears him.

At a round white ironwork table three ladies sit and have tea in evening dresses. One has a little brown dog curled up in her lap that looks at Charles with its dark eyes.  
When he walks past it snarls.  
The band plays the next song and the violin shrieks so loud that Charles flinches away from it. No one else even seems to notice.  
A man in a colourful costume juggles five or six oranges and laughs at Charles. He’s missing his front teeth.  
Children lob balls at stacked red tin cans in the next booth, winning little treats and ribbons when they knock them all down.  
The clatter is jarring and Charles rushes past. He feels sick to his stomach and doesn’t know why.  
Someone shoots a rifle and laughs.

“James,” Charles says again and three people look at him. They are smiling.  
The old woman wears a bonnet, flowers tucked into it. They are wilting next to her cheek.  
The man has a cream coat on, his gloves a dark red, stretched tight over his knuckles. There’s something wrong with his eyes, but Charles doesn’t know what.  
The young girl tilts her head curiously and steps up to him. She holds a little wooden ship in her hands, the paint chipped.  
“He’s not here, is he?”

Charles swallows and blinks sweat from his eyes. Or maybe tears.  
It stings.  
“I don’t know, I can’t find him.”  
“Do you want me to help you?” The girl’s voice is raspy, as if she has laughed too long and too loud. She reaches her little hand out for Charles and he takes it thoughtlessly.  
“Help you find your James?”  
Her grip is strong and sticky, her hand cold, even through his glove.  
“Please,” Charles croaks, looking over the crowd again.

A man selling candied apples from a push cart passes them. His voice sounds close enough to James’ that Charles turns after him.  
“That’s not him.”  
“No,” he says, voice breaking.  
“Let’s look by the lake. Naval men are always at the water.”  
The girl decidedly tugs on Charles’ hand, her little ship under her arm. The sleeves of her dress are dirty, the skirt muddy.  
Her boots are pristine.  
Charles swallows and follows her down the gravel path to the silvery lake.

The surface is so smooth, despite the little white boats flitting about, that Charles can see a perfect reflection of the girl and himself in it.  
She smiles at the reflection and waves her boat, Charles lifts his walking stick in greeting. His reflection lifts it a second later.  
There is something off about his eyes in the reflection. He can’t put his finger on it, but they are not his eyes. They are the eyes of someone else, or something else.  
Haunted, deep and dark, like the well behind his parents’ house.

Charles tears his gaze away from the reflection and instead watches the boats flit across the lake.  
Their sails are filled despite their being barely a breeze. The band plays a shanty in the distance.  
One of the boats cruising past is called the Walter, four young women and a man laughing on her deck, holding on to their hats.  
The girl lets go of Charles’ hand to crouch down and place her little wooden boat atop the lake.  
“Go find James,” she instructs it and the boat slowly ambles over the silver surface, like a dog trying to pick up a scent.  
Charles blots sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. It comes away stained a faint pink, as if he were sweating blood.  
He’s too scared to check again.

“Will the boat find James?”  
The girl shrugs, twirls a bit, so her dirty skirts swish around her calves. She looks up at Charles and tilts her head.  
“If he’s in the lake.”  
“In..?”  
He turns sharply back to the silvery water and swallows the lump in his throat. Looks past his slowly blinking reflection, trying to look under the surface of the lake.  
Something big, a dark shadow, moves through it.

It reminds Charles of a polar bear diving in clear water, stretching its neck, the powerful limbs working to bring the beast to the next piece of ice.  
Only that this shadow is about as big as a whale.

The little wooden boat with its chipped paint sails over the shadow and vanishes between two of the bigger boats.  
Charles starts pacing on the gravelly shore.  
The girl hums along to the shanty the band plays, singing an odd word here and there.  
Her raspy voice makes Charles shiver, the sun failing to dry the sweat on his forehead.  
The children chasing the hoops and dogs rush past, their laughter menacing now.  
Someone shoots a rifle again.

The little wooden boat lands on the shore and the girl lifts it up.  
“He’s not here,” she says and turns, walks up the path and away.  
She leaves Charles standing alone by the silvery lake, his reflection grinning up at him with a sardonic tilt of its head.  
“Do you know where James is?”, he asks it, desperate now.

His reflection tilts its head a bit farther, cupping a hand around its ear.  
Charles swallows and leans over the water, kneeling on the sharp gravel. It digs into his knees like pieces of glass.  
He wets his lips, sweat rolling down his nose.  
“Do you know where James is?”  
Not even his breath moves the lake. Not a ripple.  
It doesn’t even try to lap at his fingers.

His reflection puts its palm against the lake and nods, face sad and drawn now. It fits the haunted eyes.  
Charles moves closer, careful not to touch the lake.  
“Where is he?”  
“Dead and gone,” says someone right into Charles’ ear and his hands slip on the gravel.

He plummets through the silver lake and catches the eye of the old woman with her wilting flowers.  
A petal falls onto the lake and stays on the surface.  
Charles falls through. A stone through wet paper.  
He doesn’t even scream.  
The water is cold, dark presses in around him and Charles can see the shadow swim deep below him.  
It turns its head towards him, but doesn’t come closer.

Charles falls.  
Continues to fall.  
He tries to breathe, and finds he cannot. Finds he doesn’t need to.  
"James," he thinks and closes his eyes.  
If that is the last wish he may utter, the last thought he may have, then he wants it to be of the man he loves more than any other.  
He wants to see James again. Be permitted to touch the inside of his wrist and kiss his clever mouth.

Charles’ fall comes to a jarring stop, breath driven from his lungs.  
He hurts all over. The sun burns his eyes, he is cold.  
He has the distinct feeling, that, if it were any warmer, he would smell absolutely rancid. His shirt sticks to his back in a very distinct way.  
Charles tries to lift his hand to shield his eyes from the harsh sun, but he has no strength to even move a finger.  
He closes his eyes against the glare.  
Draws ragged breath after ragged breath into his lungs and thinks of James.

He’s dying.  
He gets that now.  
He’s all alone on his back in the shale of King William’s Land. Or Island?  
He never got his head wrapped around that.

James is dead. Killed on his way to salvation and safety.  
Charles somehow wishes he had found the dead men, only so that he may have kissed James’ cold lips and settle in the space between his arm and his torso, where James always keeps a little spot for Charles.  
So that he may have sat and wept for his man.  
There was never any time for that afterwards.  
Now he has no tears left.

He draws a ragged breath, tastes blood on the exhale and wishes for this to be the end.  
Shale moves underfoot somewhere to the left of him and the steps stop close by.  
He cannot open his eyes again. He has no strength left even for that.  
"James," he thinks.

“Oh,” someone says softly. “Fred, darling, my sweet.”  
The man kneels in the shale, places something by Charles’ shoulder and then there are large, cool hands on his face.  
James’ voice says, directly by his ear: “What have they done to you, Fred?”  
Charles breathes as deep as he can and exhales, blood thick on his tongue.  
He cannot answer.

James is here.  
James came to get him.

From the place where Charles Frederick Des Voeux lay and died two ghosts rise and walk the shale.  
They hold on to each other, the taller one carrying his head in the crook of his elbow.  
The ghost of Charles Frederick Des Voeux does not care either way, he has seen things far worse than his man carrying his own head.  
He promises to carry it for him, should it get too heavy.  
The sun sinks for the day and as the stars wink into the sky one after the other they walk over the shale and into the ice.  
Somewhere, faintly, someone sings a song.

**Author's Note:**

> i mean, he's dead at the end, but it could have been worse.


End file.
